How do I enable Activity Based Forecasting for labor scheduling?

This article provides recommendations to managers on forecasting schedules and labor.

Overview

Activity-Based Forecasting allows managers to base their Labor % on projected sales for their specific department sales and allows for a per-schedule analysis to cut labor expenses. For example, this would be useful if you were writing a Back-of-House (BOH) schedule and wanted to see the generated sales projections, which would only reflect the Food departments.

Activity-Based Forecasting helps managers have the right people on staff, calculate an accurate server-to-customer ratio, and analyze the anticipated sales for each department. Forecasted sales can be displayed as Net Sales (same as gross sales) or Net-Net Sales (traditional net sales view).

Enable Activity Based Forecasting

Managers can enable sales departments on each employee schedule to allocate which sales will impact the projections of those schedules when creating a schedule.

Begin by navigating to:

Operations > Labor Scheduling > Labor Setup

1. Click the Activity Based Forecasting tab.

2. Select a Store if you have access to multiple locations.

3. Select a Schedule Type.

4. Select a Sales Type. This is how labor projections will be taken into account and displayed on the projections table.

5. Check the box by clicking the Sales Department(s) that will impact the selected Schedule Tyype.

   1. Uncheck the box to remove or disable the sales department.

      Open

      

       

Labor Forecasting

The projections table appears on the Labor Scheduler feature at the bottom of the schedule. As shifts are added or edited, the projections table updates for each schedule type to the appropriate sales department.

Open

Updating the Targeted Sales on the Sales Forecasting page will affect all schedules. When a Target Sales value is set for a day (Monday, Tuesday, etc.), a “Department Sales Override” value is created for each department (food, liquor, etc.).

This generated amount is proportional to the percent that the department sales make of the store’s total sales. For example, if Food Department is initially projected to be 60% of sales, then when the sales projection is overwritten, the food department will be calculated to still be 60% of sales.

When viewing the Projections section at the bottom of the Labor Scheduler, the Schedule Sales values will update accordingly.

Scenario Example

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